unconscious as to whether we were speaking English or French; we
could express ourselves with equal facility in either language.
When I first went to school, I could speak French as well as
English, and it is a wonderful tribute to the efficient methods of
teaching foreign languages practised in our English schools, that
at the end of nine years of French lessons, both at a preparatory
school and at Harrow, I had not forgotten much more than seventy-
five per cent. of the French I knew when I went there. In the same
way, after learning German at Harrow for two-and-a-half years, my
linguistic attainments in that language were limited to two words,
ja and nein. It is true that, for some mysterious reason, German
was taught us at Harrow by a Frenchman who had merely a bowing
acquaintanceship with the tongue.

In 1865 the fastest train from Paris to the Riviera took twenty-
six hours to accomplish the journey, and then was limited to
first-class passengers. There were, of course, neither dining-cars
nor sleeping cars, no heating, and no toilet accommodation. Eight
people were jammed into a first-class compartment, faintly lit by
the dim flicker of an oil-lamp, and there they remained. I
remember that all the French ladies took off their bonnets or
hats, and replaced them with thick knitted woollen hoods and capes
combined, which they fastened tightly round their heads. They also
drew on knitted woollen over-boots; these, I suppose, were
remnants of the times, not very far distant then, when all-night
journeys had frequently to be made in the diligence.

The Riviera of 1865 was not the garish, flamboyant rendezvous of
cosmopolitan finance, of ostentatious newly acquired wealth, and
of highly decorative ladies which it has since become. Cannes, in